War in the Middle East
The Strategic Calculations of Israel's Enemies
The animosity between Israel and Iran's proxy Hezbollah is deeply rooted. But despite the war in Gaza, Israel's northern border to Lebanon has not erupted into a second front. Why is Iran holding back?
By Susanne Koelbl und Christoph Reuter in Beirut and Berlin
Demonstrators burn a U.S. flag at an anti-Israel demonstration in Tehran in October. Foto: Wana News Agency / REUTERSThe morning remained calm.
Even as Hamas units blew holes in the border fence surrounding the Gaza Strip and spent the next several hours massacring Israeli soldiers, civilians, dancing festival-goers and families in their homes, there was no attack on Israel’s northern border with Lebanon on the morning of October 7.
Not even after several hours had passed and the horrified Israelis had come to realize the magnitude of the assault.
The looming threat, about which Israeli generals had spent months warning Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, did not come to pass: A massive attack by an extremely well-armed Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Just how devastating such an attack would be is illustrated by how difficult it is to define the insular fighting force.
Hezbollah is armed by Iran much like an army, and Hezbollah, in turn, controls militia groups in Yemen, Iraq and Syria.
On top of that, it is a political party with representatives in the Lebanese parliament and is also involved in the global drug trade.
Furthermore, it possesses up to 150,000 rockets, many of which have sufficient range to target any place in Israel.
Since October 7, the Israeli army and Hezbollah have been exchanging fire, mostly in the form of artillery.
Though there have been casualties on both sides, the Israelis and Hezbollah have been at pains to ensure that this mini war doesn’t spiral out of control.
In attempting to gain a clear understanding of what, exactly, Israel’s enemies in the region are up to, the calm seen on the Lebanese border on the morning of October 7 is the clearest indicator when it comes to differentiating real threats from aggressive posturing.
And when it comes to answering questions like: What does the Iranian regime really want?
What is Hezbollah’s aim?
And what is Washington’s role when it comes to the question as to whether Israel’s offensive in Gaza remains limited or expands into a regional conflict?
Iranian politicians, to be sure, have called for the elimination of Israel several times in the past.
They also support Hezbollah, Hamas and other militias – such as the Houthis in Yemen, which issued a full-throated declaration of war against Israel last week.
Iran’s ambitious nuclear program has turned the regime in Tehran into Israel’s most dangerous enemy, and Israeli secret service agencies are thought to have assassinated a number of top Iranian scientists who were involved in the program.
At first glance, in other words, it seems reasonable to assume that Iran would seek to take advantage of something like the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel.
Iran Doesn’t Want to Risk an Attack
But that hasn’t happened.
At least not yet.
According to Ali Alfoneh, an Iranian-American expert with the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington, commanders from the Quds Force, the armed corps used by the regime for missions abroad, have been restricting their operations for the past several years so as not to risk an attack on Iran.
During a visit to Beirut in December 2020, Quds commander Esmail Ghaani "reportedly instructed Hezbollah's leadership to 'avoid provoking Israel' following the assassination of an Iranian nuclear scientist believed to have been orchestrated by Israel," Alfoneh wrote in an essay published recently on his institute's website .
Later, according to the piece, while Ghaani apparently coordinated a missile attack on targets inside Israel, he "limited it below the threshold of what could provoke a war with Israel."
Even now, following the brutal Hamas attack and Israel’s devastating response in Gaza, the calculation hasn’t changed, Alfoneh wrote.
Iran, he believes, apparently sees Hamas as an expendable pawn in the great chess game, whereas Iranian leaders in Tehran apparently see Hezbollah as a valuable strategic asset.
Hezbollah’s rocket arsenal, Alfoneh argues, is a key factor in protecting Iran from an Israeli attack on its nuclear facilities.
Azadeh Zamirirad, of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, takes a similar view: "For Iran, Hezbollah is the crown jewel in their 'Axis of Resistance' and must be protected at all costs.
Hamas, by contrast, plays a subordinate role for Iran."
A confrontation with Israel’s nuclear-armed submarines and the U.S. fleet would be Iran’s Armageddon – and it is an eventuality Tehran is eager to avoid.
Anti-Israeli Indoctrination
The animosity between the Islamic Republic of Iran and Israel is different from that with Arab states.
The two countries don't share a common border and Iran has never been directly involved in a war with Israel since 1948.
On the contrary, Iran was one of the first countries to recognize Israel’s right to exist.
Until the overthrow of the Shah in 1979, the two countries’ intelligence services even cooperated, united in their distrust of Arab countries.
Later, though, for Iran’s revolutionary leader Ruhollah Khomeini, the United States was the "Great Satan," which had provided military support to the Shah for decades.
And the country’s most immediate enemy was Iraq, under the leadership of dictator Saddam Hussein, whose troops marched into southern Iran in 1980.
But Israel?
The animosity toward the Jewish state was ordered from on high and was not a sentiment widely shared among the populace.
Khomeini introduced Al-Quds Day for the liberation of Jerusalem, but had no problem with accepting weapons from Israel over the course of several years during the war against Iraq.
For Khomeini, the self-proclaimed leader of the "Islamic Revolution," the Jewish state was primarily just a useful tool for arousing the religious fervor of his followers.
Just how little this official animosity for Israel has taken root in the Iranian population at large was on full display in the days following the October 7 attack: Whereas people across the Arab world took to the streets to protest against Israel’s bombardment of the Gaza Strip, an official avowal of solidarity with Palestine during a soccer match in Tehran was met with furious booing from the audience.
For Iran, two completely different enmities are colliding this fall: the state’s ideologically declared hatred of Israel, and the far more consequential clash over the last 20 years between the two large camps in the Islamic world, the Shiites in Iran and the Sunnis in the Arab world.
This bitter rivalry has had a decisive influence on almost all of the wars in the Middle East over the last two decades.
Whether in Iraq, Syria or Yemen, the focus has always been on the Shiites in the country either maintaining or taking over power – with massive support from Tehran in the form of weapons, know-how and militia fighters.
Hamas on the Side of Assad’s Opponents
Iran has long supported Hamas as a front organization against Israel, even though the majority of Palestinians are Sunni.
But when elements of the Sunni population in Syria rebelled against the dictatorship of Bashar al-Assad starting in 2011, Hamas threw its support behind the insurgents – against the dictatorship in Damascus and, by extension, against Iran.
Tehran even sent tens of thousands of militia fighters from Iraq, Lebanon and Afghanistan to Syria to save its vassal, Bashar al-Assad, from the uprising of his own population.
"Hamas stabbed us in the back," says an elite Hezbollah fighter in southern Beirut who spent years fighting in Syria.
"We discovered weapons there that we had delivered and which had been passed on to our enemies by Hamas."
They haven’t forgotten, the Hezbollah fighter says.
Not even after the Hamas leadership meekly rejoined Iran’s clientele groups in 2017 following the failure of the uprising in Syria.
A Hezbollah commander in southern Lebanon says that everyone in the movement was disgusted by the barbaric slaughter perpetrated by the attackers from Gaza.
"We Shiites don’t do things like that.
We shoot our enemies."
The Hamas leadership, he says, later sheepishly reported that they had lost control of the situation when their attackers, contrary to all expectations, encountered no resistance for several hours.
"But now they have done what they’ve done," he says with a sigh. "
And now we have to defend them."
Hardly anyone from the senior ranks speaks as openly as he.
But Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah, at least so far, has avoided issuing clear marching orders, despite his bellicose rhetoric.
A Hezbollah supporter in Beirut holds up a picture of the group's leader, Hassan Nasrallah. Foto: Wael Hamzeh / EPAAll that may sound rather banal given the catastrophic dimensions of a confrontation that has the potential to devastate the entire region, from Tehran to Tel Aviv.
But given the ongoing animosity between Israel and Iran, the situation can escalate in the blink of an eye.
The Hamas terror attack and the completely unexpected failure of the Israeli military and intelligence services combined with the brutal retaliation in Gaza has brought the Middle East to the brink of war.
Nobody planned for it, and nobody – likely apart from Hamas – wants it.
But preventing it nevertheless remains a challenging undertaking.
Even a high-ranking U.S. military official in Qatar considers the Israeli ground offensive in Gaza to be misguided and dangerous: "militarily, morally and politically."
And the U.S. is Israel’s closest ally.
Biden’s Fear of a Third Front
U.S. President Joe Biden finds himself in a dilemma.
On the one hand, he has made it clear that he would stand by Israel if the regime in Tehran were to open up a second front against Israel with the help of Hezbollah.
And the White House has deployed two aircraft carrier groups to the eastern Mediterranean.
But Biden wants to avoid open warfare with Iran at all costs.
Indeed, the situation is already complicated enough, with the Gaza conflict now joining the war in Ukraine – and both of them tying up money and resources.
A third front would be a disaster.
When Biden came into office in January 2021, there was hope that the U.S., with European help, would be able to resuscitate the nuclear deal with Iran after Donald Trump backed out of the agreement in May 2018.
Biden appointed Robert Malley, who has since been suspended, as the U.S. special representative for Iran.
Malley, a graduate of Yale, once attended school with U.S. Secretary of State Tony Blinken and was involved in the nuclear negotiations with Iran under Barack Obama.
But talks in Vienna aimed at a renewal of the deal went nowhere, with the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the mass protests in Iran making the situation even more complicated.
Suddenly, Iran emerged as a supplier of weapons to Russia, and that, combined with images of the regime’s brutal treatment of protesting women on the streets of Tehran, made Iran even more of a pariah than before.
To gain time, Washington conducted secret negotiations in spring 2023 with Iran in the gulf country of Oman.
The talks were never officially confirmed by the U.S., but they were apparently designed to ensure calm until the next American presidential election.
"Based on my understanding, the Iranians agreed not to sell advanced ballistic missiles to Russia," says Iran expert Vali Nasr, who teaches at Johns Hopkins University in Washington.
"They agreed no hijacking of tankers and no killing of Americans in the Middle East."
They also agreed to only enrich their uranium up to 60 percent, he says.
For a bomb, 90-percent purity is necessary.
In exchange, says Nasr, the Americans agreed to only selectively enforce sanctions on Iranian energy exports.
In part because of this agreement, the White House apparently had the feeling that it had significantly lowered the pressure in the region.
The Middle East is quieter than it has been in two decades, said U.S. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan in a late September interview in Washington. Hamas launched its attack eight days later.
Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian Foto: Adem Altan / AFPThese days, Tehran is attempting to walk the tightrope between placing itself rhetorically at the forefront of the fight against Israel while also presenting itself as a potential mediator.
That explains the skirmishes on Israel’s northern border, the sporadic rockets fired toward Israel, even from distant Yemen, and the recent shelling of American bases in Syria.
At the same time, though, Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian headed to Qatar for a meeting with exiled Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh before traveling onward to Syria, Lebanon and Turkey to demonstrate that Iran is talking with all parties and could be useful as a mediator.
Thus far, Iran’s balancing act has not transgressed the cynical rules of the game.
But how things continue depends to a large extent on what now happens in Gaza – the severity of the Israeli operation and the reaction of people in the Arab world.
The Civilians Trapped in Gaza
The 2.3 million people in the Gaza Strip have become dual hostages: of Hamas and of Israel’s military strikes.
Jerusalem has cut off water, electricity and fuel supplies, with just a tiny fraction of previous food deliveries now coming in from Egypt through the Rafah border crossing.
People can flee from the northern part of the Gaza Strip to the south, but the bombs are falling almost everywhere.
Rarely has the Red Cross, which consistently strives for neutrality, issued such a drastic statement as it did last week: "The human suffering is shocking.
Thousands killed.
People have limited access to food & water.
Hospitals are near collapse.
Hospital corridors are full of wounded & displaced. (…)
Even wars have limits."
Civilians sit in front of a destroyed bakery in the Gaza Strip. Foto: Mahmud Hams / AFPPrime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s comments about taking revenge for the Hamas terror attack, meanwhile, have been well received by the traumatized people of Israel.
The country’s central, historical and understandable doctrine, to never again be unable to guarantee protection to its Jewish citizens, has consistently led Israel to demonstrate its military superiority in the region.
To get an idea of what the current war might mean for the future, a look into the past can be helpful – to the border that is far more important for Israel’s security than the Gaza Strip.
Because Israel’s current adversaries didn’t come out of nowhere – nor are they Nazis, as Netanyahu has repeatedly claimed.
In a Christian village on the Israeli-Lebanese border, the aging farmer Giorgios Farah remembers how Palestinian refugees used southern Lebanon as a base for their attacks in the 1970s.
"The Palestinian occupation at the time was awful.
With their attacks on Israel, they had no consideration at all for us.
When the Israeli troops marched in, we were happy at first."
It was a feeling that almost everyone in southern Lebanon shared.
"But then, things got much worse.
They behaved as though our land belonged to them, had people taken away, tortured and killed," says the farmer, referring to the Israelis.
Even during the 1982 Lebanon War, it was said that Israel was fighting the "Nazis" from the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO).
As if all that was needed to justify waging ruthless war against the enemy was to stigmatize them as "Nazis," no matter how historically inaccurate it might have been.
The few thousand Palestinian fighters were annihilated, with some getting evacuated to Tunisia in response to pressure from the U.S.
Yet even as Israel emerged victorious against one enemy, the Israeli occupation produced a new, far more powerful adversary: Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, with its extensive arsenal of rockets.
When an Israeli army patrol drove into a religious procession in southern Lebanon in 1983 and soldiers, in the confusion, opened fire on the crowd, the mood shifted irrevocably.
Shiite clerics called for resistance against the occupation, in response to which a young Israeli officer named Meir Dagan ordered the murder of the most prominent clerics in southern Lebanon.
Three decades later, that same Dagan, by then a former leader of the country’s foreign intelligence service, the Mossad, warned against attacking Iran and against continually making new enemies.
But it was too late to prevent the rise of Hezbollah.
And every attempt to bomb its current enemies into submission has – for decades – only resulted in new enemies for Israel.
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